Tumbleweeds (47 page)

“He thought it was too late,” John said. “I was already in the priesthood, and he knew you’d never ask me to leave my vocation to marry you.”

“I despise him,” she said simply.

“You have reason to.”

“You should despise him, too.”

“I would if I didn’t feel enormous pity for him. He’s never stopped loving us, Cathy, and that has been his greatest torment. I believe if you saw him, you’d see he’s suffered more from the consequences of his acts than we have. You and I, for all we’ve been denied, have had our friendship, and we have Will.”

She swung around. “If I saw him, I’d shoot him, so help me God, I would. I swear if he walked in right now, I’d drag out my grandmother’s old .30-30 and blast him to hell.”

“He’ll meet his death soon enough,” John said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s dying, Cathy. An inoperable brain tumor—an astrocytoma. That’s why he’s here now.”

An image of Trey on the tennis court their senior year in high school—tall, strong, tanned, reflecting sunlight—whirled out of the past. She’d carried that picture of him through the years like a secret photograph tucked away in a wallet secretly glanced at now and then. That Trey could be dying—that strapping paragon of male health, the man she’d loved nearly all her life—momentarily stunned her, but no sorrow or pity, no understanding, warmed the cold hatred she felt for him. “I see,” she said, her voice soft with contempt. “And so he’s come to buy some eleventh-hour peace with God, is that it? Trying for a Hail Mary. How typical of TD Hall.”

“Sit down, Cathy,” John said, indicating the seat next to him.
“There’s more I’ve come to tell you.” He picked up his glass and emptied it.

Cathy’s hopes tumbled. He was going to tell her they couldn’t make Will’s paternity public. There was John’s work, his reputation, to consider as well as hers and Will’s. But what was worse—correcting an old scandal based on a lie or raising a new one established on truth? She’d not had time to think it through. She sat down. “What is it, John? Do you feel we can’t let it be known you’re Will’s father?”

“It’s not that at all, Cathy. I’ll be proud to announce to the world that Will is my son if that’s what you and Will wish. He was conceived before I took my vows, and the Church would want me to do what’s right by my child. In any case, when you hear what I have to tell you, Will may not want to acknowledge me as his father.
You
may not be all that eager to claim him as mine.”

Goose bumps rose on her skin. “Why not?”

“Trey came home to make two confessions.”

She put her hands over her ears. “I think I don’t want to hear this.”

“Do you remember Trey and me getting sick the week of the district championship game against Delton?”

She dropped her hands. “Vividly. It was a Monday. You and Trey looked green as stewed turtles from the hamburgers you ate at Bennie’s.”

“We weren’t sick from Bennie’s hamburgers. We were sick because we were responsible for causing Donny Harbison’s death.”

Cathy sat rock still, her jaw slowly dropping.

“Yes, you heard correctly,” John said. “Donny died from an accident, but Trey and I caused it. That’s the other sin he’s come home to confess—to the Harbisons.”

Cathy heard him as if a wad of cloth had been shoved into her ears. Household sounds faded. She thought of the school picture of Donny displayed on a shelf in the Harbisons’ kitchen. She’d never seen it without a vase of Betty’s flowers beside it. The photo was all she knew
of the son they had lost. His name had never been mentioned to her in the years of her buying produce from the children’s gardens at Harbison House.

John turned his head to the window, and Cathy could see memory float into his gaze like a tide bringing long-lost flotsam to shore. “Trey was convinced our scholarships to Miami were on the line if we didn’t win district, and he got it into his head we had to do something to give us an edge….”

It took no more than five minutes to relate the events of that unalterable November afternoon. Listening in horrified silence, Cathy recalled that a razor had gone missing from Dr. Graves’s clinic. She could remember the bruise on Trey’s shoulder and how he had clung to her that afternoon as if she were a lifeboat in a stormy sea. She could remember thinking then that the two of them were forever and that nothing could drive them apart.

“Trey plans to tell the Harbisons the truth about their son’s death tonight while I’m at mass,” John concluded. “He says he’ll keep my name out of it—that he’ll take full responsibility for Donny’s death.”

She was still too appalled to form a response. She could imagine the depth of the Harbisons’ pain and grief only through what she would have suffered if it had been Will strung up in the barn. To go off and leave their son like that for his parents to find… The act was almost too unconscionable to comprehend, and it had been John’s idea. But he had been only seventeen and panicked beyond any thought but saving from jail a boy closer to him than a brother—and preserving his future for the girl they both loved. John’s Catholic conscience had compelled him to choose the lesser horror of two evils.

And the act had driven him into the priesthood.

“Do you believe him?” she asked.

He diverted his attention to the window to watch a hawk diving and swooping high in the sky. The wistfulness in his gaze caused her
to wonder if he was envying the bird its ability to spread its wings and fly away. “I believe his intention,” he said.

“His intention?”

“Trey’s a dying man making his confession. He’s emotional, desperate for absolution, and on medication. It wouldn’t take but a slip of his tongue to start the Harbisons questioning, wondering….”

She felt her scalp tingle. “What are you saying? Do you think somehow they’ll learn you were involved?”

“The Harbisons are intelligent people. They’re bound to wonder how Trey could have acted alone. It would have taken two to hoist Donny’s body in the barn. Trey would never intentionally implicate me, but the Harbisons—Betty, especially—might decide to have their son’s death investigated. She is not of a forgiving nature, and in Trey’s condition he could never stand up to a police interrogation. Eventually, my name would come out. I was Trey’s best friend in high school. We were inseparable….”

A cold panic whipped through her. “Oh, my God, John. Did you warn him he was risking your exposure?”

“No. I must let Trey do what he feels he must do.”

“Oh, John!” She had the insane urge to rip his Roman collar from his neck. “How can you be so blasted priestly? You’ve got to stop him. Trey could ruin you—your life, your work, your reputation. Think of what it would do to the Harbisons if they learned of your involvement. It would destroy them.”

“Believe me, I am thinking of it, but I have no choice but to let things ride out as they will.” He stood, pushed his hands into his pockets, and stared out the window. “It may be that I’m worrying for nothing….”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No. I believe God has given me fair warning.” He turned to face her, the light behind him throwing his broad-shouldered, dark-suited figure into relief. “Cathy, dear, it’s been… very difficult for me
to live with the knowledge of the lie I allowed the Harbisons to suffer all these years. It’s a sin I’ve never forgiven myself for and neither has God.”

She did not like where his priest’s conscience was taking him. She hopped up. “Screw God!” she cried. “You’ve made up for your
sin
a thousand times over, if you want to call it that. You’ve done your penance. Betty will never, ever forgive you. Trust me, as a mother, I know. You’ve got to stop Trey!”

“Shush,” he said softly, and held her by the shoulders. “I must leave this to God and trust His will. If worse comes to worst, I must be prepared to accept it. At least I’ll be free of the shadows that have dogged my backside ever since it happened. I’m so tired of trying to outrun them….”

“But it’s so unfair!” she cried. “That afternoon was all Trey’s doing. He should take the rap for
all
of it—with God and the Harbisons. He
owes
it to you. You were only seventeen—a boy!”

His arms came around her, and she pressed her cheek to the black shirt like the time she dimly remembered from long ago when she’d rested her head against his chest after being sick in his bathroom.

“But as a man I could have put it right,” he said, speaking softly above her head. “I’m not sure now whether I did not use my allegiance to Trey as my reason not to confess to the police and the Harbisons what happened that day. And as a priest, I convinced myself that God’s work could be achieved only through people’s faith in His priests and ministers and I had no right to relieve my conscience by destroying what I had accomplished in His name. But I was wrong. God’s work will prevail despite the frailty of its priests. And all my efforts to atone for what I did have brought me no peace. Every time I look into the Harbisons’ faces, I feel my guilt.”

She lifted her head to look at him. “They must never know your involvement.”

“I pray to God they won’t.”

“If Trey had not come, you would continue living with your guilt? You wouldn’t be tempted, for the sake of your conscience, to break your silence?”

“God forgive me, I wouldn’t.” He drew away and glanced at his watch. “I have an appointment with the bishop at three. He’ll advise me what to do.” He smiled at her. “Let’s talk about how we’ll go about telling Will our wonderful news. I’d like for us to be together as a family before… whatever happens. Could I come back after mass?”

She nodded numbly. “We’ll be here.”

“It will be all right, Cathy. One way or the other, it will be all right.”

“You could be kicked out of the priesthood,” she whispered as he took his keys from his pocket. “You could face criminal charges. You could lose everything….”

He came to smooth his thumb gently across the ridge of her cheek. “Not everything,” he said. “I will still have our friendship, and I will have my son. Now I must go.” He kissed her forehead and left her staring numbly after him before the couch.

D
eke pulled away from the Turner house feeling that a black cloud had dropped over him.
Good God! John Caldwell, an accomplice to the death of Donny Harbison!
He hoped to hell he was wrong and that Trey had talked somebody else into going with him on his mission that day, but Deke had a sick feeling that the other set of prints on the extension cord belonged to John. Deke wouldn’t know until he acquired a set to match them to, but before he worked on that he had to be absolutely sure of the time the boys showed up for practice.

It was possible that Donny was killed at night and the food on the table was his supper, not an afternoon snack as assumed. Trey and John could have driven over after dark, done the deed, and returned home with nobody the wiser. But several things bothered him. One, would a boy alone in the house eat his supper on the kitchen table rather than in front of the television like every other kid in the country? And, if Trey and John were as sick as described, would they be in the mood to carry out such a stunt? He’d think it would be the last thing on their minds.

Also, the boys would have expected Donny and his family to be home in the evening unless they had reason to believe the Harbisons
were out of town. That was another point he’d have to get cleared: how the boys knew they’d be alone to have a clear shot at the ram.

He’d start first with Bobby Tucker, the defensive line coach from those days. Coach Tucker might have a different recollection from Ron of the hour the boys appeared on the field.

Deke caught him working in his yard this first week of summer vacation. Bobby was grateful for the break, and he and Deke plopped down on the porch steps. Deke came right to the point without explaining the reason for his question or that he’d been to see Coach Turner. Bobby did not take long to reflect.

“Yeah, I remember the incident like yesterday,” he said. “Coach Turner was about to have a stroke before they showed up an hour into practice. It scared the hell out of us, our quarterback and his best receiver coming out on the field sick as rabid dogs.”

“You’re sure it was an hour, not two?”

Bobby laughed. “Are you kidding? I’m telling you Coach Turner would be pushing up daisies now if they’d been a minute later.”

“But still, how can you be so sure of the time?”

Bobby grinned. “We gave them an hour. If they didn’t show up, we were going to call you at the sheriff’s department to go look for them. They made it in the nick of time.”

“I see,” Deke said, but he really didn’t. Donny was just coming home from band practice when Trey and John got to the field. “One other question before I let you get back to your mowing,” he said. “It will sound strange, but do your best to answer it. Did you notice an emotional change in TD and John during and after that week? Maybe they were distracted, edgy….”

Bobby frowned. “I’m not the one to ask. That was my first year on board, and I didn’t have much to do with Trey and John. They were Coach Turner’s personal bailiwick. He’s the man to talk to—that is, if he’ll answer his phone.” He shook his head sadly. “You know about his… addiction?”

“Melissa keeps us informed.”